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events. Readers are challenged to reject the Hegelian Dialectic and
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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Passive Resistance or Civil Disobedience: How to Stop the Endless Wars?

I have watched mothers and fathers keening in grief over the frail corpses of their children in hospitals in Gaza and rural villages in El Salvador, Bosnia and Kosovo. The faces of these dead children, their bodies ripped apart by iron fragments or bullets tumbling end over end through their small, delicate frames, appear to me almost daily like faint and sadly familiar ghosts. The frailty and innocence of my own children make these images difficult to bear.

A child a day dies in war-related violence in Afghanistan. Children die in roadside explosions. They die in airstrikes. They die after militants lure them to carry suicide bombs, usually without their knowledge. They die in firefights. They are executed by the Taliban after being accused, sometimes correctly, of spying for the Afghan National Army. They are tiny pawns in a futile and endless war. They are robbed of their childhood. They live in fear and surrounded by the terror of indiscriminate violence. The United Nations, whose most recent report on children in Afghanistan covered a two-year period from Sept. 1, 2008, to Aug. 30, 2010, estimates that in the first half of last year at least 176 children were killed and 389 more wounded. But the real number is probably much, much higher. There are big parts of the country where research can no longer be carried out.

We will not stop the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we will not end this slaughter of innocents, unless we are willing to rise up as have state workers in Wisconsin and citizens on the streets of Arab capitals. Repeated and sustained acts of civil disobedience are the only weapons that remain to us. Our political system is as broken and dysfunctional as that once presided over in Egypt by Hosni Mubarak. We must be willing to accept personal discomfort, to put our bodies in the way of the machine, if we hope to expose the lies of war and blunt the abuse by corporate profiteers. To do nothing, to refuse to act, to be passive, is to be an agent of injustice and to be complicit in murder. The U.N. report estimates that during the two-year period it studied almost 1,800 children were killed or injured in conflict-related violence, but numbers can never transmit the reality of such suffering.

On March 19, the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I will join a coalition of U.S. military veterans from Iraq Veterans Against the War, March Forward!, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace who will gather in Lafayette Park across from the White House. The veteran-led action will result in numerous arrests, as did a Dec. 16 protest organized by Veterans for Peace. It will seek, because it is all we have left, to use our bodies to challenge the crimes of the state.

It does not matter if this protest or any other does not work. It does not matter if we are 500, as we were in December, or 50. It does not matter if the event is covered in the press or ignored. It matters only that those of us who believe in the rule of law, who find the organized sadism of war and militarism repugnant and who seek to protect the sanctity of life rise up. If we do not defend these virtues they will be extinguished. No one in power will defend them for us. Protests are rending the fabric of the U.S.-backed dictatorships in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and Libya. They are flickering to life in the U.S. in states like Wisconsin. And they are beginning to convulse Iraq. Iraqis, for whom eight years of war and occupation have brought nothing but misery and death, are surrounding government buildings to denounce their puppet government. They are rising up to demand jobs, basic services including electricity, a reining in of our mercenary killers, some of whom have been used to quell restless crowds, and a right to determine their own future. These protesters are our true allies, not the hired thugs we pay to repress them.

We are wasting $700 million a day to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while our teachers, firefighters and police lose their jobs, while we slash basic assistance programs for the poor, children and the elderly, while we turn our backs on the some 3 million people being pushed from their homes by foreclosures and bank repossessions and while we do nothing to help the one in six American workers who cannot find work. These wars have taken hundreds of thousands of lives. They have pushed millions into refugee or displacement camps. They have left young men and women severely crippled and maimed. They have turned our nation into an isolated pariah, fueling the very terrorism we seek to defeat. And they cannot be won. The sooner we leave Iraq and Afghanistan the sooner we will save others and finally save ourselves.

There will be veterans in the park who carry with them physical and emotional wounds of great magnitude, who remain crippled by the dead hand of war, who never sleep well, who struggle in the black pit of depression and with post-traumatic stress disorder, and who will bear the cross that war inflicted upon them until the end of their days. They will have surmounted tremendous psychic and physical pain to make it to Lafayette Park, to defy what they know must be defied. And if they can walk their trail of tears to the White House so can you. They are our wounded healers, our disregarded prophets.

Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot who while flying saw the killings of unarmed Vietnamese civilians in what later became known as the My Lai massacre, landed in the village during the slaughter. He spotted a group of about 10 civilians, including children, running toward a homemade bomb shelter. Soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, C Company, were chasing the civilians. Thompson, dismounting from the cockpit, put himself between the civilians and the soldiers. He ordered his gunner to open fire on the Americans if they began to shoot the villagers or him. Later, Thompson, who crusaded for justice after then-Maj. Colin Powell led the official whitewash of My Lai, received death threats. Mutilated animals were tossed on his doorstep. He was unsung for decades and forgotten until shortly before his death in 2006. He exhibited real courage, moral courage, the kind of courage the state detests, the kind of courage for which they do not mint medals.

Bradley Manning, who allegedly downloaded thousands of documents and videos that confirmed war crimes by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and passed them on to WikiLeaks, is being held in a military brig in Quantico, Va. He has been kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and denied exercise, a pillow or sheets for the last nine months. His prolonged isolation is designed to break him physically and psychologically. There will be a protest outside Quantico on March 20 in support of Manning, another soldier from another war whom Thompson would have understood.

The documents published by WikiLeaks detailed for the world the widespread use of torture by Iraqi and Afghan security forces and the silent complicity of Washington. They confirmed that civilians, including children, are routinely murdered by occupation forces and that the killings are not investigated. The documents lifted the veil on our undeclared, black war in Pakistan, including drone strikes that have killed more than 900 civilians in Pakistan since Barack Obama took office. They shed light on the gross corruption, drug trafficking and crimes committed by the Afghan president as well as the reign of terror carried out by the Afghan National Army. These documents confirm that huge numbers of Iraqi civilians have been killed by U.S. troops at checkpoints, and that since the invasion tens of thousands of civilians have died as a result of the war. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) These documents illustrate in page after page that our government makes no effort to protect liberty, democracy or human rights, but instead prefers crude and brutal mechanisms of power.

The Obama administration, which has proved as efficient in serving the war machine and the corporate state as the Bush administration did, is attempting to destroy not only Manning but WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The state seeks to silence anyone who practices moral courage. It does not want the truth heard. It does not want the reality seen. If these forces of war and greed triumph, and we do not, there will be darkness. But if on March 19 there is at least one person willing to defy the state, to demand justice at the cost of his or her freedom, there will be a flame held to light the way for us all.

1 comment:

Dan
said...

If I may, I'd like to comment on Mr Hedges' linking of these Middle Eastern revolts with what is going on in Wisconsin. As someone who lives in the tax hell known as Wisconsin, I believe I can offer some clarity.

Firstly, we must resist the temptation to romanticize what is happening in Wisconsin, and we must realize that neither side in this dispute has "right" on their side. This must be understood right at the outset. Here are a few facts to consider: the governor of Wisconsin is facing a state on the verge of bankruptcy, and a state that has the 4th highest tax rates in the nation. It is a state that spends money on projects and ventures that have nothing to do with good government, and it is a state awash in corruption at the very highest levels of government. Past Governors have spent taxpayer dollars like drunken sailors on every sort of frivolous nonsense imaginable. What the new Governor (who has been in office for about four weeks - not forty years) is trying to do is to cut back some of this unspeakable waste and fraud. I will not say that he is going about this in a tactful way; he mas made idiotically stupid decisions as to how to ward off this financial disaster, but he is trying to do something, which no past governor has attempted to do. Our last governor, the unspeakabke Jim Doyle, was a horrendous disaster and he is greatly responsible for much of the mess we are in.

About public employee unions we must remember this: neither these unions nor the government are bargaining with their money; it is the taxpayer's money. Also, they are paid, and receive benefits, on an average of 45 per cent higher than workers in the private sector. The governor is not attacking private unions; he is attacking PUBLIC uniions. Even Franklin Roosevelt, the most pro-union president in US history, was against public employee unions for these same reasons.

Now, should the governor have come out just now in attacking these public unions? No, it was a stupid mistake to take this issue on at this time. He shot himself in the foot by taking this tactic. Also, he has gotten involved with some shady big businessmen, which is not for the good (though his predecessor did the exact same thing). These are black marks on his character.

Now the protestors are of two kinds: the sincere people who are worried about losing their jobs, and the rest are the usual rabble-rousing suspects. The Democrat politicians - the same politicians who shoved sodomy and abortion and other horrors down the throats of Wisconsites - are illegally "in hiding" so as to avoid voting on the issue. Their behavior is both disgusting and typical.

With this in mind, do not look upon this mess in Wisconsin as a "fight for freedom" in the Egypt style. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have here two factions, both of whom have some right and some wrong on their sides.

Key Components of Each Moral Act

all "3" must be licit in order for the moral act to be permissible (just).

The reigning (immoral) philosophy in the so-called "developed West" is Utilitarianism in which the "ends" desired dictate the use of any "means" available in the accomplishment of a given goal i.e. "the ends justify the means." This by the way was the calculus the Nazi's embraced!

The Nature of Morality as Philosophy

Perhaps the best way to conceptualize traditional morality is to view it as a systematic way of answering questions which ask what "ought" to be done from the perspective of right and wrong. Moral philosophy assumes therefore that notions of right and wrong, good and evil are real that is; exist, both independent of the "knower" and irrespective of time and place.

Furthermore, it claims that these moral absolutes or immutable moral norms are understandable that is, knowable by rational man as part of the natural (moral) law.

From a scholastic (Aristotelian/Thomistic) perspective "ought" questions always involve "3" elements; the object rationally chosen or proximate end, also referred to as means" the intent or further end and the circumstances.

In scholastic moral philosophy what ought to be done is strongly grounded in the nature of being that is to say the "ought" is based on the "is." From a practical perspective this means that the ought is circumscribed by the immutability of human nature that is, bounded by a fixed human anthropology. The essence of our human being then is presumed to be unchanging not evolving and is not relative to time or place. The Enlightenment needless to say wrecked havoc with this principle especially the post-Enlightenment philosophy of Utilitarianism and the post-modern tendencies toward subjectivism and moral relativism.

Finally, most decisions of any consequence made by individuals or groups have at least a moral component even if they are not primarily or fundamentally moral questions. For example, questions of public policy always involve morality since they of necessity ask what "ought" to be done--from the perspective of right and wrong--whether explicit or implied. Whenever we ask what ought we to do, not simply what can we do or is it possible to do; we have entered the realm of moral philosophy.

This site attempts to analyze current events from a moral perspective utilizing scholastic, specifically; Aristotelian/Thomistic moral reasoning.

Neomodernism Rejected

Much of Modern Philosophy Undermines the Genuine Goal of Humanity

NEO-MODERNISM: The Scourge of Western Culture

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"We have never had a free press. We have deluded ourselves. In the West we now have privatized censorship. There are hundreds of examples."

--Julian Assange

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Why do we spend so much on war when we supposedly can’t find the money to help the unemployed?”

--Former Congressman Alan Grayson

"War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

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--Dr. John P. Hubert

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